Since my December 2, 2005 Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma diagnosis, I've been on a slow-motion journey of survivorship. Chemo wiped out my aggressive disease in May, 2006, but an indolent variety is still lurking. I had my thyroid removed due to papillary thyroid cancer in 2011, and was diagnosed with recurrent thyroid cancer in 2017. Join me for a survivor's reflections on life, death, faith, politics, the Bible and everything else. DISCLAIMER: I’m not a doctor, so don't look here for medical advice.

Sunday, February 17, 2008

February 14, 2008 - Hearts and CT Scans

Today I go to Ocean Medical Center for my 3-month CT scan. As I walk into the room where the scan will take place, I immediately notice that the large, fiberglass-covered donut of the scanner is covered with red paper hearts, stuck up there with pieces of surgical tape.

It’s Valentine’s Day, of course, and the radiology staff of the hospital is trying to make the place look festive. I give them an “A” for effort, even if the decorations look a bit haphazard.

It’s a reminder, to me, of what medicine is all about – or, at least, what it ought to be all about. Here’s a CT scanner, one of the highest of high-tech pieces of diagnostic equipment. Its purpose is to analyze the human body, breaking the complex reality that is a human life into constituent parts that can be expressed numerically. When I lie down on that sliding platform, and the whirring engine slides me slowly through the hole in the donut, the CT scanner will render my physical existence into images, that will tell my doctors what’s going on inside me. It’s a technological wonder.

Yet, as adept as the CT scanner is at depicting what I am, it’s absolutely blind to who I am. What are my thoughts, my hopes, my dreams, my fears? The scanner knows nothing of such things.

That’s where the paper hearts come in. They look incongruous, there, on the side of the scanner. But I’m glad to see them. They tell me the hospital staff cares about more than just numbers.

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About Me

I am Pastor of the Point Pleasant Presbyterian Church, a 450-member congregation in Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey. I also serve as Stated Clerk of the Presbytery of Monmouth - a regional governing body composed of 45 Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) congregations in central New Jersey. From time to time I teach Presbyterian Polity at Princeton Theological Seminary and Presbyterian Studies at New Brunswick Theological Seminary. I am married to the Rev. Claire Pula, Director of the Bereavement Program, Meridian Hospice. We have two children: Benjamin, a singer-songwriter, and Ania, an artist. I write two blogs: "A Pastor's Cancer Diary," in which I reflect on my ongoing experience as a cancer survivor (Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, also Thyroid) and "Monmouth Presbytery Clerks' Corner," a place for Clerks of Session and other interested folks with an interest in Presbyterian polity (church government) to gather online.